Patience and process do not come easy in the world of a Major League Baseball season. And when the environment that is Boston is thrown into the mix, good luck prioritizing the long-term view.
Then there are players seemingly put on this planet just to challenge our will when it comes to obsessing over the here and now. Clay Buchholz was one. You rode out some of the worst of the worst because when he was good, there was almost nobody better. And that was a roller coaster that dipped and dodged on a yearly basis, sometimes appearing a few times a season.
Now? We have the trying case of Jackie Bradley Jr.
The unpredictability of Bradley started in spring training of 2013 when he surprisingly made the big league Opening Day roster, with debate centering around whether he'd spend 20 more days in the minors to guarantee an extra year of team control before he could hit free agency.
Since then he has spent 167 days in the minor leagues. It now seems like a silly debate. But so does the one that took place a couple of weeks ago when the possibility of Bradley making another trip to the minors to make room for Dustin Pedroia on the 25-man roster bubbled to the surface.
We have been once again smacked in the face when it comes to understanding why the Red Sox have consistently resisted the overtures of teams who wanted to trade for the 28-year-old, with Monday's insane catch perhaps serving as the punctuation.
JBJ is an absolute freak pic.twitter.com/0XD5DRXAnq
— Sox Lunch (@Soxlunch) May 28, 2018"I don't know if they had my reaction but it was like, 'Wow.' I mean, he hit it and I was like, 'That's in the corner.' He put his head down right away," said Red Sox manager Alex Cora. "You see that a lot in batting practice, the way he goes about it. I compare him to the great wide receivers from Miami in the 80s, they were pretty good. Put your head down and go up and get it. That's what he did. The body control around the wall, that was impressive."
"My level confidence has been the same all year," Bradley Jr. said. "Obviously you want results. I'm confident that results will come."
Easier said than done. But, in fairness, this isn't the outfielder's first rodeo when it comes to somehow emerging from seemingly the worst of the worst when it comes to big league quicksand.
In 2015 he went from .102 (Aug. 5) to .294 (Sept. 12) to .249 (Oct. 4).
In 2016 Bradley Jr. saw his average rise to .352 only to drop to under .300 a month later. By season's end, he sat at .267, the lowest mark since the end of April.
On July 2, 2017, the lefty hitter's batting average had slowly climbed to .284. From that point until the end of the most recent Red Sox homestand (May 20), he carried a .194 average and .572 OPS. But something interesting happened during that downturn -- the Red Sox won a lot, going 69-38 in games BradleyJr. played in.
Now we have one of those upturns so many were wondering would ever come around again. Having abandoned his leg kick for the first game of the series at Tropicana Field, Bradley Jr. has hit .300 (6-for-20) with an .833 OPS in seven games. And perhaps most telling, he hasn't struck out in three straight games, a feat he had only accomplished one other time this season.
"Yeah, it's tough for Jack and tough for us to watch because we all know how much he cares and how hard he works," said Red Sox starter David Price. "All the work he does in the weight room, the video room, MVP in the cage and to see somebody struggle like that you feel for them. For him to swing it the way he's swung it the past six, seven games that's good. He never lets it affect his defense and that's what the really good players do. They don't take their at-bats out there into the field. He continues to make web gem after web gem and that's why we love Jack."
Buckle up. The roller coaster seems to be making another turn.
